Does anyone know how exactly a third world country’s government were to contact Pres. Bush to surrender? I mean, do they call “information” and ask for some hotline? Or, are they given instructions (as terms of War) on how to contact the White House? How does this work?
It’s done through diplomatic channels. If there were an American Embassy in Afghanistan, a high up Afghani official would make the initial contact there. In the case where there is no American Embassy, there are “unofficial official” channels, usually through a third nation. Maybe it would be Pakistan in this case. IIRC we use Sweden for communication with Cuba, for example.
Haj
I think we’re already seeing signs of Pakistan as the go-between. CNN: Taliban given three days to hand over bin Laden
There aren’t many other choices as go-betweens. Before 9/11, only 3 countries formally recognized the Taliban government: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. I don’t know if any of them has broken off relations since Tuesday.
The Saudis are on our side in this conflict - bin Laden has also declared war on them and they’re listed for extermination after he’s done with us. (ha ha)
Pakistan is apparently cooperating, although they do have internal groups sympathetic to the Taliban. In other words, they’re risking civil war to side with us.
I don’t know about the UAE.
There is some Pakistani opposition to cooperating with the US, but I’d be hesitant to associate it with a potential civil war - the ruler of Pakistan is General Musharraf who tends to have a good hold on the military.
Interesting times.
To deny any involvement, Bin Ladin sent a messenger over the mountains into Pakistan and to the offices of a newspaper in Islamabad – journey time: approx. 7 hours.
Now, that’s what he did. Whether he had to do it that way is another matter, although it’s pretty much certain he communicates with the same newspaper Editor (for the purposes of answering questions raised by the that Editor who’s also writing Bin Ladin’s Biography) in exactly the same manner.
I believe he had Satcom on the early 90’s but twigged folks were listening to him so that went west.
Although conventional landline telecom is fairly hopeless in Afghanistan outside the major cities (phone, fax, e-mail), a generator can, presumably, work wonders for more advanced systems. In any event, he’s unlikely to want anything to do with the former for security reasons, as for the latter, well if ‘we’ know anything, that knowledge is hardly likely to be in the public domain right now.
He may have an advanced system, I tend to think his inclination would be to rely on a trusted shanks’s pony – or several carrying pieces of information. It has the undeniable quality of letting you know when your communications have been compromised.
As for the Taliban. They have an Ambassador in Pakistan and have held press conferences this week. That seems, at the moment, to be their preferred method of accessing the world community.
I’m not so confident Musharraf has such a tight grip on Pakistan. That country is dangerously close to being destabilized, and we have the extremist militant Islamic groups, sympathetic to Taliban, to thank for it. They are extremely anti-Shiite (one of their favorite pastimes is drive-by shootings at Shiite mosques) and they are capable of severe agitation to keep everyone in the country intimidated from the president on down. Recently a professor was sentenced to death under the blasphemy law for making some perfectly innocuous remarks to his class. The blasphemy law allows anyone to denounce anyone else using pressure groups. Imagine McCarthyism squared. Musharraf made a move last year to amend the law to allow only official prosecutors to bring charges, to take it out of the hands of the pressure groups. They made street agitations until he backed down to avoid a confrontation. Some military dictator huh.
You can bet on it, once Musharraf backs the USA in any operation versus Taliban (and I think he is sincere in offering cooperation), these extremist groups will unleash their full wrath. Then it will be showdown time. It’s gonna be either them or him. If he doesn’t want to be swept away, he may have to just mow them down in the streets. It’s gonna get ugly for damn sure.